At Leesburg Lifestyle, I rarely break the “third wall” between writer and reader. But, for our women’s issue in particular, I must deviate from convention because I have to say thank you, Dr. Kajal Roy, for giving me my life back.
It’s not uncommon for women to end up as their family caregivers. It’s furthermore no stretch to say that we who are thrust into that role for our loved ones rarely find time to take care of ourselves as well as those in our care. In my case, I was tired, fat, hypertensive and anxious. One year after trusting Dr. Kajal Roy with my hormone therapy and weight loss, I’ve lost 70 pounds, dropped all my heart-related medications and gotten back my indefinable “mojo.”
Women’s health care isn’t something we speak that openly about, unless someone says, “My gosh, you look great! What are you doing?” But, in my case, it happens a lot. So, I get to preface this rare story about Dr. Roy with a personal vignette, because her life is also changing. Instead of operating “Niyan Medspa,” she is rebranding her practice as “Niyan Medical,” complete with a new location at 450 Madison Trade Plaza SE Leesburg.
As she explains the shift, “You know the saying, ‘You don’t know what you have until it’s gone?’ Well, that rang true for me in mid-2023. I left all the roles I had in the hospital in December of 2022 and by early summer I thought, ‘Oh no, I miss it. What did I just do?’ What I missed was the art of practicing medicine – trying to figure out what the heck is going on in the bodies of my patients, I enjoy spending time to get to know them and their needs outside of whatever disease or ailment brought them to see me. I want to treat the whole person, not just one thing.”
This switch isn’t as big as you might think, since, as an internist, she was already extremely aware of everything going on in the patients she was treating with weight loss injectables and bioidentical hormone therapy through her frequent scrutiny of detailed blood panels. But semaglutides “only work until they don’t,” unless patients are willing to change their behaviors to reflect a healthier lifestyle, she asserts, and aging brings with it other symptoms and diseases that require more attention. She wanted it all.
In tandem with this desire, Dr. Roy and her husband bought a homecare agency called Assisting Hands Home Care, covering all of Loudoun County. They provide home care services such as grooming, bathing, companionship and much more to their patients in the community. “I have started to go and see our homecare patients in their homes and I love it when I see our caregivers playing board games or dominoes with the patients. I even had the opportunity to learn about antiques from a patient. Listening to the calls my husband would take regarding his patients and experiencing patient care brought back fond memories I had of connecting with my own patients in the hospital, especially the elderly. I realized that, taking care of people – whether it’s helping them lose weight, treat other medical issues, navigating the healthcare system or coming up with life plans – truly feeds my soul. So, the goal of Niyan Medical is to not only treat our patients in the office, but to also make sure they stay healthy and safe at home.”
Digging a bit deeper, the true “pain point” Dr. Roy hopes to address is, “the lack of education people in the medical field typically provide to patients.” If patients truly understand the relationship between their lifestyles, behaviors and yes, even family history, and their health, she reasons, they’ll all be better off. As for why that happens less and less in medical practice, she says, “I think it's a lot of things. I think it's the lack of time, and maybe the inability of doctors to explain things in a way that a non-medical person would understand. I also think that there are some patients that are afraid to ask questions or maybe feel like they can't. That happens a lot in the older generation; they just take what the doctor says and they don't question it. Then they just follow the directions, not knowing why.”
“When you do something without knowing why you're doing it,” she explains, “you don't see the importance behind it. And then you kind of fall off the wagon, because you didn't know why you're doing it in the first place. I want that to stop. I want people to know, number one, what do your lab values mean? What are we trying to achieve? How can basic nutrition, drinking more water and things like garlic and herbs help especially in prevention? Together we’ll set goals. They don't have to be huge goals. They can be little steps in the right direction... I think I want to empower women to just do better.”
At the end of the day, all women are caregivers. Sometimes we forget that care needs to start with ourselves.